Tuesday, June 19, 2012

More about Noodletools upgrades

Another one of the Noodletools upgrades I am excited about is the different levels available.  Right now they have starter and advanced.  But in the new version, the starter will actually be very simple--desgined for elementary students.  Only a few source types and a very clean design will help start our youngest students on the right path and by the time they get to me at the high school, citations should be a lot eaiser!

I have jokingly (well sort of anyway) told our elementary librarians if our students would come to us and not know about any other citation generator, it would make our lives so much simpler!  But seriously, if our students knew the basics of Noodletools from a young age, we could help them do so much more!

The site will also add an intermediate version for middle school students.  And the advanced level will have a mulitude of source types to choose from!  New source types, including microblogs (i.e. Twitter) and YouTube will now be available.  In addition a long list of government document source types will be available, along with very detailed step by step directions to help students make their way through the complicated citations.

As in the past users can switch between levels but now they can also switch between citation types--MLA, APA and Chicago Turbin.  This will be a handy feature for some of my advanced students who have to complete research and change formatting for different subjects.

I actually have some students working on research over the summer and I asked about their projects.  I was afraid the changes might throw them a curve in their research.  But  any ongoing projects will not make the switch to the new format--only any ones started after the upgrade takes effect.  I don't know---I might tell my kids to transfer their information over to the new format anyway just for the ease of use with the improvements.

Can't wait to see the new site!  June 25 is the big day.

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